[On 6th February I participated in the NHF South West Regional Conference “Building neighbourhoods”, held in Exeter. This is the text to accompany my presentation.] For half a century the aspiration behind housing policy in England has been captured by the statement “A decent home for all at […]
It is clear, even to the casual observer, that the Conservatives are in a bit of a tangle. You could say the same about the other main political parties. But the Conservatives appear to be going through a particularly public convulsion at the moment. They seem to have […]
Since they entered office the blue-tinged contingent of the Coalition has been engaged in a systematic process of stigmatising those in receipt of social security benefits. Great emphasis has been placed upon the undeserving and the fraudulent. There is support for the hard working strivers, but condemnation for […]
What determines the size and location of the Overton window? What types of proposals for government action are viewed as acceptable or sensible? Which proposals are viewed as popular enough to make their way into policy? And which proposals are outside the window – viewed as too radical […]
There was a bit of social media sniping yesterday that, despite David Cameron’s protestations to the contrary, the Queen’s Speech didn’t contain much of any substance to help the ailing UK economy. That doesn’t seem to me to be entirely fair, for two reasons. First, there were some […]
One of the Government’s most cunning tactics in the debate over welfare reform is the way it has shaped the discourse and carried people with it. As Jonathan Freedland observes in today’s Guardian, the tactic has encouraged poorer people to turn on each other. At the same time, […]
The Coalition’s big economic idea is that significant cuts in public sector employment will be more than compensated by a veritable blossoming of the private sector. Displaced public sector workers will find themselves rapidly migrating to new private sector jobs. There are plenty of reasons for thinking that […]
You get the sense that the fashion for political party leaders sending New Year messages to supporters and party members isn’t one that will endure. Or at least it probably shouldn’t. Dan Hodges in the Telegraph yesterday speculated on whether Ed Miliband had been captured by aliens and […]
Over at Cif today Grant Shapps makes another attempt to make the case for the policy of criminalising all squatting of residential buildings. He makes the connection to homelessness support and rightly points out that there is more money going in to homelessness services, which may compensate for […]
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 […]
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