Archive for March, 2008
Political Games
Posted by Pete Quentin in European Union on 31/03/2008
The EU’s leg of the Olympic relay race has begun and a couple of mistimed exchanges when passing the baton (buck) of foreign policy has already left it without a hope of winning gold, writes Claire Daley.
As the Olympic torch shuffles its way across the continents, a parallel relay race is taking place within the EU. Actually with more characteristics of a giant game of ‘hot potato’, member states are passing the buck on an apparently “apolitical issue” – China’s handling of protesters in Tibet.
Tackling inequalities
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 28/03/2008
The Guardian features two blogs on health inequalities that are, to be frank, almost completely non-descript. They do a good job at listing the damning evidence – that life expectancy for those in poverty has been falling further behind the national average over the past decade, that infant mortality 19 per cent higher for “routine and manual groups” than for the total population, and that this is worse than it was in 1997-99 when it was just 13 per cent – but offer no real assessment of the problem, let alone posit a solution.
Sizes of bottles, lengths of bus journeys
Posted by Nick Cowen in European Union on 26/03/2008
The EU: is there anything it cannot regulate? As Cato alerts us, apparently not. This week a wine business faces costs of £30,000 to comply with one of latest petty regulations while a bus route has to be artificially cut in three in order to comply with another, pointlessly wasting passenger time.
The NUT’s Call for Religious Instruction in All Schools: Made in Good Faith or Just Plainly NUT’s?
Posted by David Conway in Uncategorized on 25/03/2008
At present, approximately a third of all schools in England and Wales are denominational, a status that permits them, when oversubscribed, to select pupils whose parents avow the same faith as these schools.
continued on the Centre for Social Cohesion blog.
Too many short memories
Posted by Nick Cowen in Crime on 20/03/2008
With due credit to ‘Mr Eugenides’ whose frequent use of colourful metaphors renders him unsuitable to be linked to here, we can see the level of conviction with which the government is leading on criminal justice.
May 2000 – Straw plans `short, sharp jail shock’ for young
March 2008 – Too many short sentences – Straw
Competition: the solution to the NHS’s problems?
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 19/03/2008
Disagreement is still evident over the exact role of competition in healthcare, but a consensus is emerging that the ‘type’ of competition being pursued in the NHS is too narrowly focused and must facilitate greater service integration and clinical leadership.
That was the finding of a high-profile seminar organised by Civitas last month, which debated one of the key drivers of system reform in the NHS: competition.