Civitas Blog

As the snow casts a thicker blanket over Britain than it has done in twenty years, thousands of sympathetic UK workers are joining walkouts over building jobs, which unions claim are being assigned to workers from other EU Member States... writes Lara Natale

‘Food Glorious Food’ sing fellow inmates of the workhouse in which the young Oliver Twist finds himself incarcerated at the start of Lionel Bart's musical named after the hero of Dickens' famous novel similarly named after him. A half a century on, the same startling discovery seems once again to have been made by the tv chef who also bears that same name.

As has been argued on this blog and in numerous other places, endless restructuring in the NHS with little if any scientific or other rationale has caused immeasurable harm and come at huge cost. And so we go again. The decision to disband the Healthcare Commission and Commission for Social Care Inspection and create a new 'super' regulator, the Care Quality Commission - criticised from the pages of the Financial Times to the House of Commons Health Committee - is proving both costly and hugely disruptive.

If last weeks’ British wildcat strikes were redolent of protectionism, comments evoking similar feelings made by the French President have proved inflammatory to Prague, writes Lara Natale. Czech Prime Minister/incumbent EU President Mirek Topolánek has suggested that they may even end up contributing to the Czech Republic’s existing disinclination to ratify the Lisbon Treaty.

The recently appointed head of a primary school in Sheffield has just tendered her resignation after unsuccessfully seeking to end the separate weekly assemblies for its thirty odd Muslim pupils she found on arrival being organised there. She sought to end them in the belief they were divisive. Instead, her attempt to do so raised a firestorm of protests from angry Muslim parents who accused her of racism.

Today, the HSJ reports on the departure of two chief executives recently deposed of their positions at two of London's biggest trusts - Barts and the London, and West Middlesex University. Here are some of the quotes from its sources:

Professor Adrian Smith, a civil servant who is currently director general of science and research, has found himself in hot water – ostensibly for expressing his true assessment of the new Diploma courses.

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