Yesterday’s hardcopy of the Guardian reports that the Government is only planning to release the full Equality Impact Assessment for its policy of cutting Housing Benefit on the day that the legislative changes are brought forward. Critics have already argued that the policy is being rushed in so […]
So Theresa May has announced, outside of Parliament, that the Government will not be implementing the socio-economic duty for public bodies which was originally part of Labour’s Equalities Act 2010. The tone of the announcement was rather different from the signals the Government were giving back in July […]
We have yet to feel the full force of the Coalition’s welfare cuts. But we are perhaps now starting to get an inkling of the reaction they will elicit when they finally arrive. One of the puzzling characteristics of much of the discussion of the agenda so far […]
At the RSA last week Alan Johnson gave his second speech on the economy, the deficit, and the direction of policy – both Coalition and Labour. He travelled under the banner “Beyond fiscal fables and Greek myths” (available via @LabourList). This event got rather lost in the fallout […]
[Originally posted on Liberal Democrat Voice, 11/11/10] It was entirely predictable. The opening moves in a game that could see another hard-won component of the welfare state undermined have now been played. It may have been predictable, but it is no less distasteful for all that.
Over at Liberal Democrat Voice it all kicked off in response to a post noting that in 2008 Labour under James Purnell changed JSA in a way that is very similar to IDS’s recently trailed proposals for compulsory unpaid work for long-term benefit claimants believed to need reconnecting […]
We are starting to get strong indications of the shape of the Coalition’s proposals on welfare. Today’s papers are trailing the core idea of requiring unemployed people to participate in 30-hours per week of unpaid manual work in the community for four week periods. It appears that if […]
[Originally posted on The Policy Press Blog, 04/11/10] Personalisation is squarely at the heart of current policy debate around adult social care. For the last 10 years the British government has been experimenting with moving away from assisting users through providing services drawn from a relatively short menu […]
[Originally posted on Liberal Democrat Voice, 03/11/10] At the heart of politics lie battles over meaning. In an uncertain world there is plenty of scope to contest the definition of problems and the perceived effectiveness of solutions. Under Labour we came to think of agenda management as “spin”, […]
The report in today’s Guardian that Windsor and Maidenhead council are exploring “reward points” as a means of encouraging locals to engage in “Big Society” activities is intriguing. This comes shortly after news of the possibility of importing a version of the Japanese system of time-banking for voluntary […]
“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)
“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)
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