[Originally posted at Dale&Co, 27/09/11] One of the less pleasant characteristics of the Coalition government is its cavalier attitude towards transparency, accountability and Parliamentary process. This is part of a more general impoverishment of democratic practice. We hear reports of serious, but relatively small scale, issues such as […]
There will no doubt be much soul-searching at this week’s Labour party conference. There will no doubt continue to be subtle – and not so subtle – attempts to distance the party from the legacy of the Brown government and its cataclysmic electoral implosion. Without, of course, suggesting […]
The feature article in yesterday’s G2 magazine was a piece from the Liberal Democrat conference by the music journalist Alexis Petridis. It was fascinating to read the impressions of a party conference novice. All the more so because I wasn’t at Conference this time around (for reasons discussed […]
On Friday a quote from the great Cambridge economist Joan Robinson was circulating on Twitter: Purpose of studying economics – to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists In fact, the full quote is: The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made […]
Today I posted over at Dale & Co: The global financial system continues to convulse. The latest shock to the system is the exposure of an alleged $2bn fraud at UBS. Grave concerns about the external regulation of the financial system are reinforced by equally serious concerns about […]
[Originally posted on Bristol Running Resource, 11/09/11] I hope your experience of today’s Bristol Half was a positive one – that you got to the finish line in one piece and with a smile on your face. If you were aiming for a time then I hope you […]
Occasionally I divert myself from tweeting and blogging long enough to write something a bit more academic, usually about housing. I have a paper in the current issue of the journal Housing, Theory and Society. It looks at Uncertainty, expectations and behavioural aspects of housing market choices. The […]
If you’re not careful you can lose sight of quite how far housing policy has travelled in a relatively short space of time. Some of the fixed points in the housing policy debate have been destabilised. Grant Shapps talks of radical change and the need to disturb the […]
The tuition fee debacle was bad. But at least there was a reason, if not an excuse. Neither major party was committed to removing tuition fees. So whoever the Liberal Democrats ended up in Coalition with it was unlikely that the party was going to be able to […]
The Work Programme (WP) is the Coalition Government’s £5bn replacement for the range of programmes – including the Flexible New Deal – designed to assist unemployed people back into work. While the WP learns from and builds upon previous initiatives it also represents a departure. Its key characteristic […]
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