Tag: Coalition government

Communication breakdown

We’d all like everyone to like us. We’d all like everyone to think everything we do is great. Unless we’re very lucky, that doesn’t tend to be how things are in real life. But apparently it is in CLG-land. I invite you to have a quick look at […]

Laying the foundations?

Yesterday saw the publication of the Coalition’s housing strategy. It brought together policy touching upon housing from across a range of Whitehall Departments. The document represents a welcome recognition of the importance of housing to the broader economy and society. It covers quite a lot of ground, although […]

RAGging the Coalition on housing policy

So far this week we’ve seen plenty of activity around housing policy. Yesterday we had the launch of the Intergenerational Foundation report on private sector underoccupation. This was revealingly juxtaposed with the debate in the House of Lords on the restrictions to housing benefit for underoccupying tenants in […]

Pop goes the #ldconf

The feature article in yesterday’s G2 magazine was a piece from the Liberal Democrat conference by the music journalist Alexis Petridis. It was fascinating to read the impressions of a party conference novice. All the more so because I wasn’t at Conference this time around (for reasons discussed […]

The rethinking of social housing

If you’re not careful you can lose sight of quite how far housing policy has travelled in a relatively short space of time. Some of the fixed points in the housing policy debate have been destabilised. Grant Shapps talks of radical change and the need to disturb the […]

Access denied

Yesterday saw Ken Clarke present the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill to Parliament. While the focus has been on the sentencing U-turns, that is a bit of a sideshow. Any liberal with a concern for rights, and in particular the rights of the relatively less […]

Dr Cable: the Cassandra within Cabinet?

Vince Cable seems to be occupying a somewhat awkward role in Government as the Coalition enters its second year. While continuing as Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, he appears to be acting as agent provocateur-in-chief of the new style Lib Dem “opposition within government”. He […]