The media, both old and new, is currently under intense scrutiny. Last week James Murdoch was back before the Media Select Committee, making his bid for the title of least inquisitive Chief Executive in corporate history. On Monday we witnessed a fascinating encounter between the Joint Parliamentary Committee […]
[Originally posted on Liberal Democrat Voice, 18/11/11, under a slightly different title] It is a truth universally acknowledged that Britain has a housing problem. There are problems of shortage and, consequently, access and affordability. There are three principal mechanisms for dealing with significant housing shortage and indirectly reducing […]
There are many models of policy-making in the literature. Some are simplistic. Some are tediously over-elaborate. At the moment I’m reading Malcolm Dean’s new book, Democracy under attack, in which he offers his own informal, institutionally-oriented definition. Dean manages to convey the imperatives, intricacies and intractability of much […]
Lucas Papademos, former vice-president of the European Central Bank, has now been installed as the new Prime Minster of Greece. The imminent arrival of former European Commissioner Mario Monti as Prime Minister of Italy will get the post-Berlusconi era properly under way. This is to be an era […]
It strikes me that we may need to rewind the clock and recapture something a bit simpler. It might help some members of the political elite talk more sense. There is a continuing academic debate over how to measure poverty. Broadly speaking, thinking on poverty has moved away […]
Earlier today I was reading a piece about the financial crisis which argued that part of the problem with the financial system is a greater reliance on the technology, quants and trading over distance. There are fewer regular face to face meetings with counterparts in the market. This […]
In a post at Liberal England yesterday entitled Clegg tells Lib Dems to come out from behind the sofa Jonathan Calder responds to a brief piece in the Independent on Sunday. The Indie reports that Lib Dem ministers have been instructed to be a bit less reticent in […]
When doing away with our yearly ritual of moving the clocks forward and back is condemned because a change would mean we’d be using “German” time I think we know we’re in trouble. When Conservative MPs like Julian Lewis feel able to go on record to criticise senior […]
In a recent New York Times blogpost Paul Krugman responds to a correspondent who complained about the looseness of his writing. Starting sentences with ‘And’ or ‘But’ seemed a particular irritant. Krugman is only too conscious of the challenge he faces. The subject matter he is dealing with […]
[Originally posted at Dale&Co, 15/10/11] The Cash for Questions scandal and the associated perception of endemic sleaze contributed to the demise of the Major government. It ushered in a period of institutional renewal. The Committee for Standards in Public Life was established under Lord Nolan in the mid-1990s […]
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