The Annual Health Check of NHS organisations, released today by the Healthcare Commission, presents a picture fit for the NHS’ 60th birthday bash earlier in the year. Sixty-two per cent of organisations are now rated ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ on quality of services, up from 41 per cent two years ago, and those rated ‘excellent’ or… [Read More]
Defenders of a society based on a liberal political culture and a market economy have often disagreed over the best way to handle drug taking. One of the great champions of free markets Milton Friedman was famously in favour of legalisation. Others favour strict control. This week the Home Secretary announced that cannabis is to… [Read More]
Last month, Britain’s biggest examinations board AQA decided to drop a popular poem from its GCSE syllabus written by Scottish poet Carol Ann Duffy. Entitled ‘Education for Leisure’, the poem takes the form of a stream of consciousness account of the thoughts and increasingly violent deeds of a bored and alienated unemployed teenager while he… [Read More]
Open Europe, the independent think tank backed by some of the UK’s leading business people, has produced the first independent report estimating of the cost and wider effects of the EU’s new package of climate change measures, currently still under negotiation.
Many conservative leaders are in a quandary about the financial crisis. They approve of de-regulated markets but these selfsame institutions seem to be in need of regulation. Many people in the financial services industry have behaved without regard to the good of others and even without reference to the interests of their own companies. Their… [Read More]
The Conservatives’ plan to encourage social entrepreneurs, charities and parents’ co-operatives to establish new schools in our poorer areas is a promising idea that deserves the praise it has been getting. But it has a potentially fatal flaw that could undermine any advantages it might bring. Above all, the new Tory academies lack the independence… [Read More]
At last week’s Tory party conference, shadow education secretary Michael Gove committed his party upon their return to power to restoring the teaching of narrative British history in schools. He reportedly said: ‘Instead of being taught about the Magna Carta the Glorious Revolution and the heroic role of the Royal navy in putting down slavery,… [Read More]
Last Friday, Gordon Brown’s latest attempt to appear at “getting on with the job of running the country” saw him reshuffle EU Trade Commissioner, Peter Mandelson, back into the UK cabinet.
This blog last Thursday wrote about whether or not the government was pushing the public health agenda too far without proper debate on the implications for civil liberty. Apparently, this doesn’t seem to matter a jot to the Department of Health.
One minute America’s seemingly riding the crest of an economic boom we are told will never end. The next moment it’s 1929 all over again. What’s going on and who has brought us to this current sticky pass? Those in search of an explanation of the economic turmoil will find little help from Britain’s mainstream… [Read More]