There is a fundamental economic illiteracy about British politics that contradicts the idea that Lady Thatcher brought about a revolution in attitudes in this country. Profit is still too often a dirty word. Just as it is still almost universally... — read the rest

Good stuff from Barbara Ellen: Alternatively, maybe it is time to acknowledge a bizarre cultural shift. That far from being a nation of politically correct scaredy-cats, we have all gone too far in the other direction, becoming so kneejerk anti-PC... — read the rest

There is a thought-provoking post at Stumbling and Mumbling on what role should empirical evidence play in policy making. Chris Dillow's suggested answer is very little, and he makes a strong case for it. By and large, I'm swayed by... — read the rest

This is the message being sent by the government to schools: if you don't improve, then you must close. This is a tough issue, because there are a large number of factors well outside the control of schools that affect... — read the rest

The always excellent John Rentoul on the Independent's Open House blog: The age of consent for gay men in Northern Ireland is to be made the same as for heterosexuals at 16... I mark this a significant gain in the... — read the rest

Being the title of an interesting article at First Drafts. Two big quotes: To this day, the number of people bracketed as ‘working class’ by sociologists is falling, while the number identifying as such is rising. And: Moreover, once class... — read the rest

According to Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, Britain "cannot become a God-free zone". There's loads in it of interst, but there are two points I'd like to make. First point: in his speech, O'Connor says: I detect among many people a... — read the rest

Excuse the vulgarity of the title of this post: some people just have that effect on arbitrary constant. One such example is Foxtons the estate agents, which has been affectionately renamed "Fuck 'Ems" in this household. Not usually being one... — read the rest

As a glance at the tabloid newspapers will confirm, England is a nation of overweight, binge-drinking reality TV addicts. But it's also a country of animal-loving, tea-drinking, charity donors, where queuing remains a national pastime and bastions of civilisation, such... — read the rest

Mencap has recently created, in collaboration with people with learning disabilities, a font which is accessible for everyone to read easily. Mencap has big hopes for the font: FS Mencap will be available for public use, rivaling Arial and Helvetica... — read the rest

Voting systems are usually the preserve of psephologists and constitutional anoraks. I'm no psephologist, but I wouldn't argue against anyone that called me the latter. Britain has, to many a person's chagrin, a first-past-the-post voting system. This means the person... — read the rest

The classy Stephen Bayley in the Observer: How will London look if Ken's scheming endures or Boris's or Brian's schemes succeed his? It will be less polluted, whoever wins. Livingstone's form we know: big promises, small deliveries and more tall... — read the rest

They're letting anybody in nowadays. That's a Conservative Member of Parliament (David Heathcote-Amory) to Dawn Butler, one of two black women MPs (as reported by the Observer). Aside from the fact that being democratically elected is hardly being "let in",... — read the rest

The Observer reports on the food crisis: In less than a year, the price of wheat has risen 130 per cent, soya by 87 per cent and rice by 74 per cent. According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation,... — read the rest

Who? Mediums, psychics and the like. Why? Because of this: A change in the law could mean mediums, psychics and healers face prosecution if they cannot justify their claims. Two things: (1) I doubt any mediums or psychics can justify... — read the rest

An interim report on a study into social housing allocation, commissioned by the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Local Government Association, shows that there is no bias towards foreign migrants. Within the findings are the following: — New... — read the rest

Just back from 3 (vidiprinter says - three) weeks holiday. Refreshed but am now paying the price of doing some uni work, where I came across this about the privatisation of public space in Britain, with in particular shopping malls... — read the rest

I don't see any reason for the bbc to conflate being white and being working class as reasons combined for the white working class to be in decline. It is very well known, documented, researched and corroborated that being non-white... — read the rest

There's a treat waiting for me every Wednesday: in picking up the Guardian for the Society supplement (at 80p), I always round up my spend to a round £1 by picking up a copy of the Sun, too. For 20p,... — read the rest

An article by Trevor Phillips, chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, on Barack Obama in this month's Prospect magazine has caused quite a kerfuffle. Here is that kerfuffle in a few, short links: — Healing postponed. The original... — read the rest

As I wrote the post on party funding late last year, it occurred to me that, though agile government is no bad thing, it would be good if we could just start with good government! At the very least, the... — read the rest

I wrote recently about a survey which showed that few people in Great Britain knew what human rights were covered under the Human Rights Act. In the same survey, there were some similarly interesting findings concerning how people thought the... — read the rest

Some recent survey evidence showed that the understanding of human rights in Great Britain is poor. The survey, by GfK NOP (only privately available at the moment) showed that, although some 97% of respondents had heard the phrase "human rights",... — read the rest

You have to laugh. A passenger was asked on the bbc news what he made of the above-inflation rises in rail fares. His answer was a sort of question: I don't know how much this is going to cost on... — read the rest

Concerning issues such as the identity card and associated national id database, and the extension of the pre-charge detention period, my natural inclination had always been to trust the government of the day. Thus, I was willing to accept a... — read the rest

Demos has recently released a joint paper with the State Services Authority in Victoria on "agile government". By this, it means governments should be able to make decisions quickly, allocate resources flexibly, take appropriate risks, access high quality data to... — read the rest

I noted the Young Foundation's recent publication, In and Out of Sync, in a recent post on innovation in the voluntary and community sector. This month's Public magazine (concerning management of the public sector, published by the Guardian) has a... — read the rest

Via normblog comes this thoughtful article on what education — and specifically a university education — should achieve. The argument of the article's author, Anthony Kronman, is that the concentration of academics on developing a specialism in order to focus... — read the rest

I've always been slightly skeptical of organic food, and nodded in approval when David Miliband highlighted that organic food is more an issue of lifestyle than health. Similarly, I've always been slightly baffled by the reputation and reception of genetically... — read the rest

Ever the pessimist, arbitrary constant felt some resonance emanating from the Ecologist magazine's cover story. Here's the Observer's summary of that story: [This is] what is wrong with British society: superficiality, selfishness, social fragmentation, hypocrisy, disempowerment and the destruction of... — read the rest

The Observer reported over the weekend that Keith Jarrett, a senior police officer, has urged police to stop and search more people from ethnic minorities, in order to address inner-city gun and knife crime. A few days ago, I noted... — read the rest

The Science Museum has cancelled a talk that the scientist James Watson was to give this week because he said that black people were less intelligent than white people. In doing so, it has got it both exactly right and... — read the rest

The increasing and future importance of the voluntary and community sector is encapsulated within the phrase "double devolution". This essentially involves central government giving more power to local government and local government giving power to local people, the latter often... — read the rest

I was just thinking. Can I claim sex discrimination against a company, because I don't get maternity pay because I'm a male. No? This doesn't sound any different to saying that a woman can claim discrimination because she's more junior... — read the rest

I wrote here recently about how legislation can help impact positively on the ability of public services to deliver a better and more efficient service to its users. That legislative mechanism is known as the Disability Equality Duty. Similarly, legislation... — read the rest

Decentralisation can only happen if local government and the public service workforce take on the challenge of becoming more ambitious, more accountable and more responsive to their users and their local public. Meanwhile, we also need to engender new behaviours... — read the rest

Today sees the start of the new Equality and Human Rights Commission (echr). The new Commission brings together the 3 previous rights-based commissions — the drc, eoc and cre — and has a mandate to champion equality and human... — read the rest

Public service reform is near constant and an important part of the political sphere of British life. The difference between the politics of reform and what happens on the ground — your and my interactions with the local council, schools... — read the rest

Facebookers! Are you interested in any of the following: ending the early release scheme for prisoners, tougher sentencing, streaming by ability in schools, a tax cut 'for families', additional taxes on polluters, emergency pension funds, or having more police on... — read the rest

I was pleased to read the following this week: Thousands of people in Britain and around the world are dying prematurely from heart disease triggered by long-term exposure to excessive noise, according to research by the World Health Organisation. Coronary... — read the rest

Lawyers are all right, I guess... I mean they're all right if they go around saving innocent guys' lives all the time, and like that, but you don't do that kind of stuff if you're a lawyer. All you do... — read the rest

The news that staff of the Australian Primer Minister have made numerous edits to "potentially damaging entries" will be music to Oliver Kamm's ears. Oliver has been one of the keenest critics of Wikipedia and, though trenchantly argued, many of... — read the rest

The "quotation of the week" has lapsed on arbitrary constant. This post aims to re-introduce it with the following long quotation from Raymond Chandler's The Long Good-bye: There's a peculiar thing about money[.] In large quantities it tends to have... — read the rest

As both Rich and the slightly less esteemed people at the RSA get all introverted about the internet, blogging and it's place in society, I'm just starting to get into Facebook. What with me being entirely against all of this... — read the rest

Figures showing a 200,000 rise in UK children living in relative poverty last year have been described as a "moral disgrace" by Barnardo's. The children's charity said ministers were a long way from honouring a pledge to halve child poverty... — read the rest

So, you're the head of the most widely read and influential newspaper in the country, you earn £1.2m a year (that's twice what the BBC director general earns), you never talk on the record and in your first public announcement... — read the rest

Channel 4's latest titilation-a-thon skins , which starts this Thursday, is (hopefully) a tit-a-minute saga about, well seemingly, swearing, sex, drugs and booze. All of which is absolutely fine by me. However, being of the vintage that I am, I'm... — read the rest

The title of this post is an excellent phrase from Martin Amis in a recent Q&A with readers of the Independent (and which comes via norm). The rest of the Q&A is here, though this is the particularly good Q&A:... — read the rest

Justifiably, there has been a lot of coverage of Saddam's hanging. Though I do not resile from anything I have said before on this, I do think that there was something of an underestimation of what the literal process of... — read the rest

There has been quite a bit of coverage concerning the far right in Europe, and the UK in particular, of late. Some time ago I wrote an essay on what has caused this recent "wave" of extremism in Europe, which... — read the rest

Continuing this very occasional series — entries one and two can be found here: number 1 and number 2 — that celebrates experts or artists in a specific field using the fact of that expertise to make an inappropriate, uninformed... — read the rest

Following on from my last post, I'd like to express both worry and delight in the way in which university campuses appear to be vital to the efforts of many disparate groups and organisations. The first example of such behaviour... — read the rest

The subject of this post is easily stated: can — and should — a secular society accommodate religious belief? This subject is inspired by an article in PPR by Julian Baggini (subscription required) and the answer offered here, as there,... — read the rest

Thanks go to Stef for his posts over the last couple of weeks. I hope that he will consider writing here more often in future and will update readers on that in the near future. I'd like to pick up... — read the rest

I'm not going to add to the chorus that polishes off its song book and sings the song of exams getting easier at this time of year. Instead, let us note the news in today's papers which highlights One in... — read the rest

I'm pleased to see the resurgence in the numbers of students taking maths at AS- and A-Level. Maths is, I'm afraid to say, a great subject for anyone willing to move beyond their basic fear of it. I'm not going... — read the rest

The bbc reports that the average commuter spends 139 hours a year travelling to and from work. Taking these commuters to have a generous leave entitlement of 30 days a year, that's not much more than 37 minutes a day... — read the rest

The institute for public policy research (ippr) recently released a paper entitled "A Citizen's Duty: voter inequality and the case for compulsory turnout" [1], which makes the case for compulsory turnout in the face of decreasing election turnout and voter... — read the rest

Conventional military operations against states cannot remove the threat of further attacks by networks that no state controls. — John Gray (in False Dawn: the delusions of global capitalism)... — read the rest

Thames Water is currently losing some 864m litres of water a day through its dilapidated pipes, an enormous waste which is only underlined by their face-saving advertisement campaign. Thames Water's issues are based in engineering, whereas the public's relationship with... — read the rest

You wouldn't believe me if I said that the power to reduce the uk's domestic energy requirement lay at your fingertips — but it does. As widely reported in the press in the context of the government's plans to commission... — read the rest

Whilst I am invoking far better writers than me to make cases against writers I don't much care for, it would be remiss of me not to mention Madeleine Bunting (on the back of the recent announcement that she is... — read the rest

Note: this is a guest post by Paul Canning I'm very lucky that the business park where I work backs onto the River Mole and a large parcel of common land which is there for no other reason than the... — read the rest

In a recent issue of the Economist was to be found this gem:Saddam Hussein said he had gone on hunger strike to protest against tough treatment he is receiving during his trial.Tough treatment. The only tough treatment he has encountered... — read the rest

There was a challenging article on the subject of breastfeeding published in the Guardian recently. For the first time in my adult life I encountered a breastfeeding mother today. Far from being offended by this, I was quite enamoured by... — read the rest

Posting will still be light until early next week but I wanted to draw attention to the following since it is a time-dependent issue. There is a Stop the War Coalition demonstration tomorrow — Saturday — in which 10,000 people... — read the rest

There's nothing people love more than having a good moan over some disproportionate fine issued for a seemingly innocuous reason, is there? A teenager is refusing to pay an £80 on-the-spot fine imposed by a police officer who overheard him... — read the rest

You couldn't help but notice the fuss over freedom of speech of late. A recent article (subscription required) in the Economist, though, highlights an interesting related topic known as "ambush-marketing" in which non-sponsors piggy-back on a big sporting event that... — read the rest

On the one hand Google censors itself in China whilst on the other it rejects the US Department of Justice's requests for information on users' searches. Even if Google tries to abrogate itself of any moral dilemmas concerning its presence... — read the rest

Fox hunting. It was basically about class, wasn't it? Dick Cheney shoots a guy in the head. That was basically about how the US and the UK shouldn't have gone to war against Iraq, wasn't it? No? Well, I'd agree... — read the rest

The recent Austrian trial of David Irving, the Holocaust denier, came at a difficult time for defenders of freedom of speech. How can someone who has used his freedom of speech to say, amongst other things, that the Auschwitz gas... — read the rest

Harry is right on the money on what amounts to an unhealthy dose of hypocrisy in Britain — as represented by the British media.The British media and to some degree public opinion does seem to be rather expert in this... — read the rest

Norm links to a story about Nigel Kennedy - the "world's most famous violinist" and possibly one of the world's most famous Aston Villa supporters too (aside from this bloke). I met Nigel Kennedy in a restaurant in Guildford once.... — read the rest

Sister Lucia, the last of three shepherd children who claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary appear in 1917, has died. The story is one of the best-known instances of holy visitations bestowed upon us mere mortals, and laid the... — read the rest

Janet Street-Porter on the new American television import Desperate Housewives in today's Independent, under the headline "The banality of American popular culture":From The Office to Little Britain, the best television in the world starts here [the UK]. We are capable... — read the rest

Howard Jacobson's article in the Independent's Iraq one year anniversary "special" has really hit home. I have always respected Jacobson's pieces and for a long time bought the Independent on a Saturday for the sole reason that it was the... — read the rest

An article in today's Independent reveals that same-sex marriages are on the increase and are apparently becoming big business. Nearly 1000 couples have "tied the knot" since partnership ceremonies were introduced two years ago:Although partnership ceremonies have no legae effect,... — read the rest