Tag: David Cameron

Beyond the blue-on-blue soap opera

The EU referendum debate is as horrendous as it is important. The psychodrama of blue-on-blue attacks makes for good television. But the absence of other voices and other perspectives on the debate is glaring. And it could be decisive. Those who are sick of the sight of Cameron, […]

Taxing questions

I’ve not said much about the whole Panama/Prime Ministerial tax schmozzle. That’s not because I don’t have views. But I’m not sure that I’ve got them entirely straight yet. A few things seem clear. It seems unlikely that David Cameron has done anything technically illegal.

Executive unchecked

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 […]

Housing markets and economic stories

Part of the story isn’t being told. As we move towards the General Election strands of news and snippets of information have emerged which circle around the issues but there is a gap in the middle where the story could – and should – be. I’m thinking here […]

Independence, devolution and power

Independent on Sunday front page – “Who to believe” #tomorrowspaperstoday #bbcpapers #indyref pic.twitter.com/I5DyzXeMPl — Nick Sutton (@suttonnick) September 13, 2014 When I first saw this tweet, late last Saturday night, my immediate and admittedly facile response was “Neither of them”. Alex Salmond was propounding a vision for an […]

Housing pathology and paralysis

A few weeks ago Janan Ganesh in the FT described the UK housing market as an ‘institutionalised pathology’. The problems that the housing market is causing for the British economic and political system seemingly become ever more apparent by the day. There is an increasingly strong coalition of […]

Is third party expertise just what the kids need?

On Thursday Noah put up a brief post on the Market Priesthood. It relates the story of Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, of Freakonomics fame, meeting David Cameron, of Coalition Government fame. Levitt and Dubner tried to persuade Cameron that health care was just like any other part […]

Moralizing destitution

Just by way of a change, today I wrote a post at Medium.com. It’s a crisp, clean properly WYSIWYG writing experience. There is just enough formatting to allow you to make your point. But not a lot of bells and whistles to distract you from the writing. That […]

The £74,000 question

The brouhaha over the impending proposal by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority to increase MPs pay to £74,000 is understandable. It seems perverse to be considering an 11% pay rise on a £66,000 base salary at a time when most other public sector workers are in the middle […]