One of the most intriguing characteristics of blogging is its flexibility. You can find plenty of people willing to offer their views on how you should go about blogging if you want to maximize your audience and the like. But, while some of these hints and tips may […]
There is a broad consensus among politicians, analysts and commentators that Britain needs to build more housing. You can encounter dissent from that view, but it tends to be on the fringes – in deep UKIP anti-migrant territory or the paramilitary wing of the rural lobby. The debate […]
This is the five hundredth post on this blog. It is, of course, an entirely arbitrary milestone, but it nonetheless causes you to reflect on why you do it. Five hundred posts translates into well over half a million words, at a rate of ten or so posts […]
Well, well, well. It turns out that the bedroom tax isn’t such a good idea after all. Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander have U-turned on the policy, ostensibly in the light of the (delayed) publication of interim report of the DWP evaluation. The report indicates that the policy […]
The relationship between politicians and civil servants is back in the spotlight. Janan Ganesh in the FT, for example, has argued that civil servants need to be brought to heel more effectively by their political masters. Cries of ‘politicisation’, whenever the prized independence of the civil service is […]
The sudden appearance of the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill and the proposal to bulldoze it through Parliament in a few days has set off alarm bells for many who care about civil liberties. Members of the Liberal Democrat leadership and Parliamentary party have been out and […]
I spent the back half of last week at the European Network for Housing Research Annual Conference in Edinburgh. The organising committee were kind to me. My paper on the battle over the “bedroom tax” was timetabled for the first morning, so it was soon out the way and […]
I had to read Dan Falchikov’s The new Lib Dem summer campaign is an admission of failure a couple of times to get to grips with the issue. The blogpost topped last week’s LDV Golden Dozen so, presumably, it attracted a decent readership. And so it should. Dan comments […]
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