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March 2015

ECJ ruling on curbing welfare tourism should go further

27 March 2015

European Court of Justice Advocate General Melchior Wathelet released an opinion yesterday on the circumstances under which EU nationals should be able to claim benefits in another member state country. The statement is a fine-tuning of the court decision taken in November last year, after a case was brought forward by the Federal Social Court… [Read More]


A bold suggestion to address the European immigration issue

Malik Azmani, an MP of the ruling party in the Netherlands, the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), published a bold proposal last Sunday to shut all external European borders for non-EEA immigrants and to provide safe havens in their regions. All Dutch parties except Geert Wilders’ far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) condemned the… [Read More]


HS2 is only one part of what is needed to rebalance the economy

25 March 2015

HS2 is in danger of losing its consensus. The project has already come under heavy fire, with the Department for Transport being attacked by the Public Accounts Committee in 2013 for using ‘fragile numbers, out of date data and assumptions that do not reflect real life’. The House of Lords Economic Committee has now published similarly damaging claims that… [Read More]


Who sees the globalisation elephant in the EU debate?

24 March 2015

Open Europe’s new study, ‘What If?’, has been panned by Eurosceptics for suggesting that leaving the EU could realistically cost 0.8% GDP, while few praised the alternate finding that, by 2030, exit could add 0.6% GDP  yearly. The report says both: it examines what might happen with the EU; domestically; and with the rest of… [Read More]


Plain packaging for English cigarettes: the right decision

19 March 2015

If we are to save the NHS, simply restructuring and improving its services will not suffice, we must reduce the demand for those services in the first place. This is why the promotion of preventative medicine is so important, and why we, as a nation, need to invest more in public health programmes. Last week,… [Read More]


Farage’s 2015 referendum demand could weaken Brexit’s cause

17 March 2015

‘I want a full and fair referendum to be held in 2015 to allow Britons to vote on being in or out of the European Union.’ This, Nigel Farage notes, would be Ukip’s price for a confidence and supply agreement to support a Conservative government after May’s election. Farage’s gambit suggests either the same politicking… [Read More]


Ending race discrimination law is a weak response to job competition

13 March 2015

This week Nigel Farage successfully whipped up another race row by saying that he would end much of the race discrimination law in the workplace, in an apparent attempt to defend the interest of British workers. But Farage is shockingly wide of the mark here, especially given the unsavoury views of some of his own former… [Read More]


Sugary drinks: pay as you go?

12 March 2015

On billboards we have recently observed plasticene figures sitting beside cups overflowing with sugar cubes to illustrate the amount of sugar we are consuming with every ‘fizzy’ drink. Campaigners for child health have today further proposed implementing a tax on sugary drinks in an effort to curb their consumption. They suggest this tax could be set… [Read More]


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