Archive for May, 2008
More ambition required for next Thursday’s Child
Posted by Pete Quentin in Education on 30/05/2008
The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), New Labour’s most relied-on think tank, has proposed that the ‘long’ summer holidays (shorter than in most of Europe) be abolished in a bid to curb what has been referred to as the ‘summer learning loss’ amongst pupils from deprived backgrounds. The report, ‘Thursday’s Child’, co-authored by Sonya Sodha and Julia Margo, argues that a new system of – essentially – school holiday dispersed through the year, needs to be introduced. Their proposal entails shortening the summer holidays to just four weeks.
A glimmer of light from Sir Bruce
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 29/05/2008
Perhaps one of the biggest misnomers in the NHS at present is payment by results, quite simply because it isn’t payment by results at all. It’s payment by caseload.
For an operation from the same health resource group, whether you bungle it and leave the patient ridden with MRSA and disabled for life or whether you’ve done a world-class job that Lord Darzi himself would be proud of, you’ll get paid the same.
The public’s tax priority: stability
Posted by Nick Cowen in Tax and Spend on 28/05/2008
After Brown’s £2.7 billion bailout over the 10p tax debacle, the multiple taxes on motorists are now coming under greater scrutiny. In the early years, the majority of attacks directed against the Labour Government were the introduction of stealth taxes. That criticism no longer applies. A doubling in vehicle excise duty on ordinary family cars fails to achieve what any ‘decent’ stealth tax would do: creep into the family budget, bite a little chunk out of it and sneak it back to the Treasury, preferably without the public noticing. The ruse will probably be discovered months later but by then is relegated to a mere bullet point in a Tax Payers Alliance briefing. They are not meant to generate newspaper campaigns against them. So the Government’s tax strategy appears to have de-cloaked and, although it has taken on a green mantle, it does not appear any less ugly for it.
How Not to Produce Community Cohesion
Posted by David Conway in Social Cohesion on 27/05/2008
The tragic discovery last week in her Handsworth home of the emaciated corpse of seven year old Khyra Ishaq raises several disturbing questions.
continued on the Centre for Social Cohesion blog.
Social enterprise: the way forward?
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 21/05/2008
‘The potential for social enterprise and not-for-profit organisations to contribute to health and well-being remains almost completely unrealised’, surmised Harry Cayton, at a debate hosted by Civitas in the House of Commons last week.
The question is why? Social enterprise – as shown in personal examples such as SELDOC and Stahcom, led by Mo Girach, and Knowledge into Action, the brainchild of Sir Muir Gray – has much to offer.
Marriage in modern Britain: out of reach, not out of fashion
Posted by Pete Quentin in Family, Marriage and the Culture on 20/05/2008
A new report from Civitas, Second Thoughts on the Family, finds marriage to be more popular than ever – but a luxury beyond the reach of the poor
Overwhelming majority of Britons want to marry
Defying the idea that marriage is dead, a new Civitas/Ipsos Mori survey of 1,560 young people reveals that the overwhelming majority want to get married:
Marriage: fit for purpose in 21st century Britain
• A nationally representative sample of 20-35 year-olds shows that seven in ten want to marry
• Cohabitation has NOT replaced marriage: nearly eight in ten (79 per cent) of those cohabiting want to marry
• The number one reason why young people want to marry is to make a commitment (47 per cent)
• Just two per cent want to marry for tax reasons
• Less than one per cent think that marriage jeopardises equality between men and women