In last week’s positively surreal broadcast of BBC tv’s Question Time, deputy prime minister Jack Straw blathered on about how Parliament had boldly preserved freedom of expression in Britain by deliberately refraining from making Holocaust denial a crime. In yesterday’s Times, Straw was joined by his cabinet colleague, Foreign Secretary David Miliband, blathering on about… [Read More]
The pre-election season seems to have ignited a raft of prescriptions for fixing the NHS, and this is a good thing. In a new report entitled ‘Rebalancing the market,’ the NHS Alliance echoes the recent DH endorsement of the NHS as the market’s ‘preferred provider’, but it presents a different rationale.
Keeping primary pupils ‘back’ if they have not reached the expected standard is a highly contentious policy. Whilst it is a fairly common practice in some European states (including France and Germany), in others it is considered to be the height of child cruelty.
The twentieth anniversary of 1989 reveals more the cacophonous quality of Europe rather than its balanced unity. In recent months Europe has been confronted with a chorus of master-narratives about its recent past: the ‘triumph of liberal democracy’, ‘Westernization’, or ‘liberalization’, especially of European thought – following perhaps the example set by the turn of… [Read More]
Britain is currently suffering an epidemic of excessive drinking that, it is estimated, will exact a toll of 91,000 lives within the next decade. Currently, to attract customers, supermarkets and nightclubs often sell alcohol at very low prices. To curb its consumption, some are calling for a minimum unit price, but the Government is resisting… [Read More]
The latest findings from the Cambridge Primary Review, published today, raise many interesting and important issues. Whilst the main media focus has been the proposition that the school starting age should be raised to 6, the Review’s line on testing is also significant.
While the Conservatives are announcing plans to restructure PbC, the current government seems to be rethinking the future of the process as well.
A brief comparison of the political styles of two politicians – Vaclav Klaus and Vaclav Havel reveals the ‘era of disgust’ that has plagued Czech politics in the last twenty years. Vaclav Klaus’ obstructionism in the last few days is somewhat difficult to explain. It is not necessarily pressure from Eurosceptics in the UK. His… [Read More]
Although I’m pretty certain my children would want to contest the claim, the prize for being the world’s grumpiest old man must surely go to the nineteenth century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. More than practically all else, what got up his nose was noise — especially that caused by traffic. Writing a century a half… [Read More]
Many large corporations in the United Kingdom offer private health ‘top-ups’ or insurance cover as a benefit to employees, and it turns out the NHS is one of them.