Here are the five posts on this blog that recorded the most hits between October and December 2015: Housing: what crisis? (23rd Nov) Housing and the Autumn Statement (27th Nov) Why is Owen Jones so annoying? (4th July 2013) Social care: an augury of the shape of housing things […]
Blogging around here has been a bit different this year. For various reasons I’ve only managed to publish around 50-60% of the usual number of posts. Given the much reduced level of activity, the fact that hits on the blog were only down 10% or so doesn’t seem so bad: […]
I spent much of Boxing Day reading, perhaps a little belatedly, Joris Luyendijk’s Swimming with Sharks: My journey into the world of the bankers. It’s a book that has featured on one or two lists of books of the year. The book is based on around 200 interviews conducting between 2011-2013 […]
In the wake of the most recent exit by Labour’s serial resignationista Dan Hodges, the question of where next for those on the moderate centre-left has again been given an airing. Toby Young helpfully responded to Hodges’ departure by suggesting he join the Tories. Nick Tyrone provides a clear statement […]
Liberals aren’t desperately keen on concentrations of power. It’s pretty integral to the whole ‘liberal’ thing. Whether it be power accreting to the state or to private interests or to the church, stark structural inequalities can threaten mechanisms by which different voices can be heard and society can […]
The full ramifications of George Osborne’s pronouncements on housing during the Autumn Statement will no doubt take a while to emerge. Some of the rumours of nasty surprises proved to be unfounded. There were some surprises that were broadly positive – such as the increase in stamp duty […]
Last Friday evening I took a trip out to Coalpit Heath to talk housing at a meeting of the newly constituted South Gloucestershire Liberal Democrats. The title I was working to was Housing: What Crisis?. The talk was followed by a Q&A session in which members of the […]
The announcement by ONS that housing associations are to be reclassified as non-financial public corporations, thereby moving at least £60bn of debt onto the public balance sheet, came as a surprise to many. It perhaps came as more of a surprise than it should have done, given that […]
The Chancellor’s defeat in the House of Lords on Monday over cuts to tax credits has, rightly, generated acres of commentary. I don’t propose to review the debate in detail here, other than to observe, as a number of commentators and bloggers have already noted, that on this […]
Following up a similar post at Liberal Democrat Voice earlier today, Jonathan Calder at Liberal England has reflected on what he has been blogging about on 19th October all the way back into the mists of 2004. He invited others to do likewise. It feels a bit retro, but I’ve […]
“No section of the people has ever been excluded from political power without suffering legislative injustice”
(Millicent Garrett Fawcett, 1847-1929)
“The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable”
(JK Galbraith, 1908-2006)
“Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult”
(Samuel Johnson, 1709-94)
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