Here are the five posts published on this blog between January and March that recorded the most hits: Last desperate throw of the dice? (11th March) … but words can never hurt me (20th January) Libdem futures – Implosion or renewal? (15th March) An Elected Mayor for Bristol? […]
George Galloway’s historic victory in Bradford West apparently snuck up on everyone while the inhabitants of the Westminster village were squabbling over their pasty consumption or creating mayhem over the supply of petrol. But for more acute observers – who’d actually been paying attention to the way the […]
Is this Government corrupt? It depends on how you define corrupt. If the focus is upon demonstrable criminality then the answer would have to be no. More pertinently, is it corrupting? Recent events should concern anyone who believes that healthy democratic practice is important for a healthy society. […]
Yesterday I was rereading a paper by George DeMartino entitled The economist as social engineer. DeMartino’s main argument is that economics needs a professional ethics because the prescriptions it offers to policy have the potential to do great harm, as well as deliver benefit. In the course of […]
Why is there a lot of talk about a mansion tax at the moment? The short, obvious answer is because the budget is imminent. Liberal Democrats have long held the belief that it is better to tax wealth than income. This position was reaffirmed at Spring Conference. A […]
We are witnessing a spate of exits from the Liberal Democrats announced online. While these have been happening intermittently for a while, we’ve had several in the last week or so. James Graham announced that he was leaving the party, and elaborated that the issue was party politics […]
Just over a year ago the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) produced a scathing report on the Coalition Government’s approach to creating a “bonfire of the quangos”. It suggested that the whole process was fundamentally inept, as I discussed here. The Coalition nonetheless moved forward with the Public […]
Is that it then? Has the single transferable vote system allowed the Liberal Democrat leadership to breathe a huge sigh of relief? The motion to drop the Health and Social Care Bill won the first round of the ballot to select an emergency motion to debate on Sunday […]
[Originally posted at Dale&Co., 03/03/12] This week’s instalment of the Leveson Inquiry has raised some pressing questions about inappropriate relations between members of the police and corporate interests. We were presented with argument that highly questionable, if not corrupt, practices were commonplace among public officials. It’s therefore unfortunate […]
Elected Mayors are, apparently, the answer for our big cities. The Coalition has decreed that on 3rd May the citizens of Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Coventry, Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield, Nottingham and Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Wakefield be invited to participate in a referendum. The choice is whether they stick with the […]
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